USE OF HYDROLYZED FEATHER MEAL IN DIETS FOR CHANNLE CATFISH Ictalurus punctatus

Chicken feather meal quite often is viewed as an undesirable product as most people think of ground up feathers, which have many processing and nutritional issues. However, modern feather meals are typically produced through a controlled process  which improves digestibility and processing characteristics .  Given the poor understanding of the quality of these meals  we chose to evaluate the efficacy of hydrolyzed feather meal (HFM) in catfish feeds.

For this work we investigated the  replacement of poultry-by-product meal (PBM) or soybean meal (SBM) in a practical catfish feed formulation.  The basal diet contained 6 % PBM and 56.5 SBM  We then incrementally replaced  PBM with  2.5 % and 5% HFM . Another five experimental diets were also made  by replacing  soybean  meal with  2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, 10%, and 15% HFM . Diets were formulated to be iso-nitrogenous and essential amino acids were s upplemented to maintain minimal levels that should meet the requirements.  The growth trial  conducted for  78 days. The catfish were stocked at 15 fish per tank using four replicates per tank .  The survival of the catfish was around 94% across all treat ments with not significant difference found due to diet. With the ex ception of one diet, the  inclusion of FM did not influence the growth or FCR of the fish. Diet 3, which  contained  5% FM as a complete replacement for PBM had significantly lower growth and FCR than the other treatments. As there was no effect of higher levels  of FM as a replacement for soybean meal , it is likely this was due to a miss-formulation of the diet. It is likely, that the AA supplement for Lysine  were left out. This will be confirmed by analysis of the diets which is ongoing. Growth, FCR, nutrient retention as well as the nutrient content of the test diets will be presented.